Madison Cawthorn shows up everywhere, armed dammit.
He got caught at an airport toting a gun. Again.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) was cited for having a gun at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport.
This is the second time Cawthorn has been discovered with a gun in an airport. pic.twitter.com/JrVj2ng2Yk
— The Recount (@therecount) April 26, 2022
Kinda makes you miss Louie Gohmert, right? Face it, Madison is just Louie with a gun.
“The books are to remind us of what asses and fools we are.” — Ray Bradbury
It always starts easily enough. A concerned citizen sent a list of 60 books that she found objectionable. These books should be removed from the public library. At least that is how everything got started in Llano County. It ended up turning into a federal lawsuit.
In the meantime, a librarian was caught in the crossfire as they usually are. She was fired when she refused to remove books from the shelves. A secret cabal of concerned citizens bandied together to come up with the list of books that should be removed. The same librarian caused a stir when she attended the meeting. Obviously, she wasn’t supposed to be there.
Why should she be there? The meeting only concerned the books that would be on the shelf in her library. Again, I would have to repeat that we aren’t talking about school libraries here. We’ve already seen enough stories about districts (Katy, cough) that have tried to censor what their students can read. Now, we are going after the adults.
One of the groups most effected is a group you wouldn’t think would be effected. The group that is the most up in arms in Llano County are the senior residents there. Many of them have taken up electronic books because they are not as mobile as they used to be and can’t necessarily make it to the physical branch. Many of these titles have been wiped off of the electronic catalog.
I still remember battling with my parents over technology. Simple word processing and spreadsheet tasks were a nightmare. I remember when my mother first got one of those Nooks from Barnes and Noble. She was reluctant at first, but now she hardly ever puts it down. She can purchase new titles for pennies online and at Itunes. I could just imagine if her favorite author was removed from the list.
These things are very simple. If you have to meet in secret to do anything then there is something rotten in Denmark. I won’t say that you are definitely on the wrong side, but chances are pretty good that you are. Anything that you want to do in private should be able to be done in public. It really is that simple.
It must be some kind of magic that Mark Meadows could do an actual job of Chief of Staff when he spent all his time text messaging.
No, seriously.
CNN has obtained 2,319 text messages that former President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows sent and received between Election Day 2020 and President Joe Biden’s January 20, 2021 inauguration.
The vast trove of texts, which Meadows selectively provided to the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, offers the most revealing picture to date of how Trump’s inner circle, supporters and Republican lawmakers worked behind the scenes to try to overturn the election results and then reacted to the violence that effort unleashed at the Capitol on January 6.
Well, you know where I will be this afternoon.
First thought: The My Pillow guy needs something to occupy his time, you know, like a job or something. I bet that guy has thumbs the size of Dallas.
I look for deviations every day in my business … when I find one I investigate relentlessly until I know why it happened and how it happened… ( this is my gift from God that has made my business so successful)
Apparently, God hands out crazy behavior like it’s beads at Mardi Gras.
There can be no greater separation between whatever we call progressives and whatever we call conservatives than the feelings about billion dollar corporations. Conservatives fought to give those corporations rights to free speech where progressives normally view those corporations with some level of skepticism or scorn. At the very least, there is a constant battle to get those corporations to pay their fair share in taxes.
This is why the battle over Disney is such a unique battle. No single quote has had a greater impact on the past forty years of politics than Ronald Reagan’s quote from his first inaugural address. “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” No other line quite captures the sentiment of conservatism. That quote gets magnified when we deal with corporations the size of Disney.
Disney has been given all kinds of perks and favors over the years. The idea is that Disney creates more for the economy and stimulates more growth than the government ever could. So, the best thing a government can do is take a back seat and let Disney do their thing. Naturally, we will ignore that while Disney is a fine place to visit (our family has been there three times in the past six years) and they have stimulated the economy in general, as an employer their spoils aren’t exactly distributed equitably.
Such is the nature of these things. A good progressive will take the Reagan quote and insert the word corporations for the word government. It’s not that we don’t want them to exist. It’s that we want them to be tempered and regulated so that their excesses can be reined in. We want workers treated fairly. We want consumers to be protected. We want the effects of the greed that happens naturally to be limited.
What gets lost for the current crop of conservatives is that corporations have no moral compass. They can’t. As much as Citizens United wants us to believe that they are people we know they are not. They are about pure profit motive. They want to sell my daughter a “pride donut” while also seemingly catering to “family values.” They want all of our money.
So, I’m not sure what Desantis and the other movement conservatives were thinking when they came out against LGTBQ+ individuals. When they passed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill what exactly did they think would happen? Did they think Disney would purposely cut off a sizable portion of it’s customer base? Disney has made its billions by being all things to all people. It can appear to be wholesome and family friendly and also friendly to people of all lifestyle choices. They’ve made their way through that mine field. They are incredibly successful because they have done this.
So, now conservatives are going against their core beliefs. They are punishing a corporation for taking a stand. It puts progressives into the uncomfortable position of supporting a corporation like Disney. In the end, corporations are the same. They are all things to all people. They are signs of the ultimate greed and avarice driving a wedge through our society and environment. They are welcoming to all people because all currency spends the same no matter who it comes from. Corporations can and will be both. They can because they can’t afford not to be. At least the successful ones like Disney can’t.
In what my friend Vickie describes as “on the edge of Austin and sanity,” I give you this.
That’s a Saturday. I’m wondering how many electric cars we can get to block all the roadways into Austin. Oh hell, what am I thinking? That’s a normal day in Austin.
It’s hard to believe.
And there are pictures.
He admits it happened but it was at a party on vacation on a cruise before he was elected to Congress. I’m certain cruises are Jesus-free zones and since he wasn’t a congressman when it happened, it wasn’t a gender specific event.